The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.

From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."

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Sunday, January 20, 2013

The Algerian Hostage Situation

by Abraham H. Miller

The
hostage situation in Algeria has descended into chaos and Western
governments are venting their criticism at the Algerian government for
storming the Al Qaeda-linked hostage takers and precipitating a
shootout. The Western governments might wish to reconsider the
appropriateness of their judgments.

For decades I labored in the world of hostage and barricade situations interviewing
hostage negotiators and assault teams both here and abroad. The Western
model of hostage negotiations emanates from law enforcement,
specifically from a program designed by the New York City Police Department.
The NYPD model was highly successful and adopted by governments through
out the Western world. It was predicated on the idea that every life is valuable, hostage takers ultimately do not want to die, and success is achieved when everyone walks out alive -- including the hostage takers.

Similarly, the model for
dealing with airline hijacking was predicated on the idea that
hijackers were not suicidal, one should cooperate with them, get the
airplane safely on the ground, and let some government's trained
specialists get the hijackers to capitulate. We all saw how successful
that model was on 9/11.

The
idea of saving everyone's life -- even the lives of terrorists -- was
widely celebrated in these policies and seen as rooted in our
Judeo-Christian heritage. So imbedded in our thinking was the idea of
the value of a human life that at the highest levels of government,
pre-9/11, people spoke of Islam as also finding suicide abhorrent.
Intelligence analysts dissected what appeared to be obvious suicide
missions against Israel as having an escape route. And suicide bombings
were deviant events, certainly something America would not have to worry
about.

Hostage
and barricade situations, no matter who the hostage takers were, could
be handled by getting the hostage takers to embrace the value of their
lives and do the rational thing, capitulate. Consequently, a domestic
dispute resulting in hostage taking, an interrupted robbery resulting in
hostage taking, or a terrorist group taking hostages for political
reasons all were generally seen through the same lens and intellectually dissected the same way.

Some
European countries used trained psychiatrists as negotiators and when
some hostage-takers capitulated and subsequently committed suicide, the
medical community demanded investigations of the negotiators. Rather
than assume that a hostage taking might be a manifestation of a suicidal
impulse, the medical community thought that somehow in the process of
negotiating the psychiatrist had implanted thoughts that drove the
hostage taker to take his own life. Psychiatrists who had saved lives
found themselves being investigated for being catalysts for suicide.

Of
course, not everyone adhered to the "everyone walks out
alive" model. Police departments other than New York were less likely to
run the clock and put innocent lives at risk while a crazed man with a
gun made demands. The Los Angeles Police Department's SWAT team
became legendary in police circles, and somewhat grudgingly admired,
for its physical training and the skills of its marksmen. LA SWAT would
negotiate and try and get a hostage taker to do the right thing, but if
they had an opportunity to use force, they were going to do it. If
terrorists shot first, SWAT was not going to hesitate to return fire. In
police circles the adage was, "New York will talk you to death, but if
you start f**kin' with LA SWAT, they will kill you for real."

Although
European countries lined up with the New York model, Israel was more
like Los Angeles. I once interviewed an Israeli general whose units had
handled some of Israel's most difficult and violent hostage and
barricade situations. In preparing for my interview,
I noticed that no terrorists survived the assaults of his troops. I
asked him about that, and after digressing into the nuances of a fire
fight with automatic weapons, he looked me straight in the eye and said,
"You notice that. They notice that too."

That
was a time when the Palestinian terrorist groups, like Palestinians
generally, where largely secular. And killing a group of terrorists made
it far and away more difficult for the terrorist organization to
recruit for the next mission.

Precious
few who operated in the world of hostage and barricade situations
before 9/11 truly embraced or even mentioned the idea of Jihad and
religious fanatics willing to sacrifice their lives to be with virgins
in paradise. And those few who did, like Dr. Robert Kupperman, the
one-time Chief Scientist for the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament
Agency, were treated as alarmists.

Even after 9/11 a lot of
thinking in policy circles was that terrorism is a problem for domestic
law enforcement. It is this mentality that gives rise to the
unfortunate and inappropriate criticism of the Algerians.

We
need to grapple with the reality that a new breed of terrorist does not
want to live but wants to die for Jihad. The old models for hostage
situations do not work, and labeling incidents like the Fort Hood
massacre as workplace violence does not help. It denies that the
perpetrator, Major Nidal Hassan,
was motivated by fanaticism and acted in the name of Jihad. We cannot
simultaneously deny what terrorism is and formulate policy to deal with
it.

Hostage
and barricade situations that pit terrorists who want to die against
hostages who want to live are not going to be resolved as a scenario out
of the NYPD negotiating manual. It's time to realize that. Domestic
terrorists who embrace Jihad cannot be treated like bank robbers who
walked into a bank to take money and only take hostages to escape being
captured. Bank robbers do not embark on a suicide mission. Jihadists do.

Yes,
the situation in Algeria is chaotic and messy, and it will continue
that way until the terrorists in this episode are hunted down and
killed. To defeat this kind of terrorism, we must realize that
terrorists commit acts of terrorism for the same reason that people sell
bread. There is some profit in it. When people can't make a profit from
selling bread, they will stop. When terrorists realize that there are
far reaching repercussions for those who orchestrate acts of terrorism
that make terrorism a liability, they will stop.

To
achieve this we must recognize what and whom we are fighting. This
means stopping the euphemistic rhetoric about terrorism and the
political censorship that removes "Jihad," "Islam," and "terrorism" from
the same sentence. It means crafting new policies that makes acts of
terrorism immensely costly for those who send people out to kill
innocents for their cause. There is much that can be done, if we have
the political will to do it. In the meantime, the Algerians deserve our
support, not our misguided criticism.